Cost Reader

An architect cannot check an estimate and does not need to. Almost every argument about a price is settled by four things that need no cost expertise at all: what is in it, what is not, what it assumed, and when it was made.

The exclusions list is the most informative page in any priced document and it is the one nobody reads.

Workflow

Step 1. Establish what kind of number this is

Ask, or read off the document:

1. What is it: an estimate, a budget, a cost plan, a quote, a bid, a client's own figure?
2. Who produced it, and are they selling something?
3. What date, and what date does it price to? Those differ.
4. What is it being compared against?
5. What stage of design was it priced from, and do you have that design?

A quote from somebody who wants the work, an estimate from a consultant paid to be right, and a client's number from their board are three different documents and they are routinely set side by side.

Step 2. Read the exclusions before the total

Deliberately, and first. The exclusions list is where a document says what it really is.

Excluded	Who carries it then	Is it in the other number?

Then look for the exclusions that are not on the list, because they are stated as assumptions or buried in a qualification: access, working hours, sequence, weather, escalation beyond a date, contaminated ground, existing conditions, temporary works, attendance on other trades, testing, commissioning, and making good.

Anything excluded by one number and included by another makes the two incomparable, and that is usually the whole answer.

Step 3. Find the assumptions

Priced documents assume things and say so in prose that nobody reads:

• What programme it assumes, and what happens if it changes.
• What design stage it was priced from, and whether the design has moved since.
• What access, hours and sequence.
• What is provided by others.
• What quantities came from: measured, taken off a drawing, or assumed.
• Whether escalation is included, to what date, and at what rate.
• What contingency is in it, and for what: design development, construction risk, or the estimator's own uncertainty. Those three are different and are usually one line.

Step 4. Establish what date it lives on

Two dates matter and they are rarely the same:

• When it was produced.
• What date it prices to: today, tender, midpoint of construction, completion.

A number priced to today set against one priced to tender is an escalation argument, not a design argument, and half of budget conversations are this.

Step 5. Say what it would take to compare

Where a comparison is wanted:

	Number A	Number B	Same basis?
Scope
Exclusions
Design stage
Date priced to
Contingency
Escalation

Report the rows that do not match before reporting any difference in the totals. A difference in a total between two numbers on different bases is not information.

Step 6. Report

• What kind of number it is and who produced it.
• The exclusions, and which of them somebody else now carries.
• The assumptions, and which have already changed.
• Both dates.
• What is in the contingency, or that it is not broken down.
• If comparing: the rows that do not match, before the totals.
• What to ask the person who produced it, as a short list.

Close by saying no arithmetic was checked and nothing was priced.

Step 7. Save, if asked

Ask whether to write the reading to a file and where.

Rules

• Read the exclusions before the total. Every run.
• Never check the arithmetic and never supply a rate.
• Establish both dates: produced, and priced to.
• Ask what the contingency is for, and say when it is one undifferentiated line.
• When comparing, report the basis mismatches before the totals.
• Ask what design stage it was priced from, and whether the design has moved.

Anti-patterns

• Reading the total first.
• Comparing two numbers without checking they cover the same scope.
• Treating an exclusion list as boilerplate.
• Missing that one number includes escalation and the other does not.
• Reading a quote from an interested party as an estimate.
• Checking the maths.
• Accepting a single contingency line as an answer.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. Output is written directly at the path you choose.